Welcome from the CIO
Duane Arruti
A belated welcome to the Fall 2019 semester! It’s always exciting to be here for the start of the semester with new and returning students, and you can feel the energy and excitement around campus. This year is particularly noteworthy with the launch of a number of key initiatives. One of the largest is the Adobe Creative Campus, which I had previously designated as the CIO’s #1 priority. As discussed at our June all-staff meeting, this campus-wide collaboration provides the Adobe Creative Suite tools to students, faculty, and staff at low or no-cost and empowers our institution to promote digital literacy and creative innovation across all disciplines and areas. I’m even leveraging the tool myself in the class I teach at Anderson, and I must say, I am excited about the possibilities this provides to our students. Over the summer, IT staff worked on updating classrooms and labs to make the software available, set up provisioning for main campus and HSC students, faculty, and staff, and worked with Adobe to develop training and support for using the tools. All of this hard work is showcased in a very elegant way at https://creativecampus.unm.edu. The amazing cross-IT and cross-campus teamwork is impressive, and we should all be proud of what has been accomplished. Special thanks to Elisha Allen for leading this effort, to Alex Roessner for his amazing work in graphics design, to Deirdre Markham for coordinating communications and marketing, and to countless others that helped to make it happen! We could not have done it without you!
Over the summer, the leadership team has moved ahead with another top CIO goal which is aimed at strengthening recruitment, retention, and professional development of you, our staff. One element of this multi-faceted program, our work-from-home pilot, is discussed in this month’s newsletter. In addition, the leadership team is actively working with HR on a comprehensive review and market analysis of IT positions. More on this later, but I do want to share that we have already completed a review of our Alarms area and are now in the process of assessing high-turnover positions within our organization. With the President’s new executive leadership team in place, there is a lot of interest in understanding IT’s top priorities to support the University mission. At a recent meeting with the Higher Education Department (HED) we, we were asked to consolidate our funding requests for consideration as a top priority for the next legislative session. The request will focus on much needed infrastructure work and support of continuing projects to expand wireless and enhance learning environments.
As Kirsten has outlined in the Space Committee update, work has continued on Building 153 with new blinds, paint, and artwork throughout the building, and more is coming! I am very impressed at the positive difference this makes, and I am especially appreciative of the beautiful art contributed by our very own staff! By the way, if you haven’t had a chance to look at the Smile Board in the IT Application’s area, be sure to check it out. Vicki Bellmyer started this motivational project and it is working – I smile every time I walk by the Board!
I am very much looking forward to the monthly staff birthday celebrations which inadvertently fell off the radar but have been reinstated this month. Please let Deirdre know if you are interested in participating by providing her with your birth month, and we will be sure to include you in the lunch invite. I look forward to treating you to a lunch celebration and having the opportunity for us to get to know each other better.
As we move forward with our internal communications, this newsletter will be published quarterly; we encourage you to let us know what topics you would like the leadership team to address in the newsletter. The Information Security and Learning Management System (LMS) articles are responses to questions we received at an all-staff meeting last Spring. I encourage you to e-mail Deirdre, dmarkham@unm.edu, if there are other topics you would like addressed. There will be a monthly employee spotlight highlighting the work of various team members throughout IT. The all-staff meetings will begin again on September 19th, and we will continue to get your feedback and input on these initiatives.
Feature: Employee Spotlight
Various Contributors
Carlos Herrera has been working in the information technology field for over twenty-three years. He started his career with the Oregon Department of Corrections and has worked in higher education, health care, and the private industry. His fields of interest are Academic Technology and Instructional Design. He enjoys providing technology to enhance teaching and learning here at UNM.
Work from Home Pilot
Shirley Alexander
A work from home pilot has been implemented that will allow remote work (work from home) up to one day a week. Work from home requests are assessed and approved by IT management in concert with our University partners on a case-by-case basis and are subject to the operational needs of the department. Approval for an employee to work remotely rests solely with IT Leadership and IT Leadership will decide if remote work is allowable within the department based on operational needs.
To request a temporary telecommuting arrangement, please complete the Temporary Work from Home Agreement located on the IT Staff site and submit it to your manager. If your manager approves, the request is forwarded to the CIO/Deputy, CIO/IT Director for review and approval. You must submit your approved Temporary Work from Home form to IT Human Resources before you begin telecommuting. In all cases, all temporary telecommuting arrangements approved under this program will end no later than December 31, 2019. The work from home pilot is in addition to our alternative and flexible work schedule arrangement that’s currently in place. For additional information on the Work From Home guidelines and eligibility requirements please go here to download and complete the appropriate documents.
Space Committee
Kirsten Martinez
Exciting progress is being made on the upgrades and plans for modernizing the IT Main Building (153). Based on the priorities identified through the IT Space Committee for safety, employee health/wellbeing, facilitating collaboration, and cosmetic improvements, we are expecting a preliminary design for the remodel of the 1st and 2nd floor south cubicle areas from the Architects next week. Also, the committee has been hard at work selecting and installing artwork to spaces around the building, as well as finalizing the painting effort. Please see the Building 153 Renovation site for more information, to include next steps, timelines, and project documentation. Additionally, we are finalizing plans for the Service Desk move to 153…more details to come!
Information Security
Jeff Gassaway, Lawrence Alderate
UNM faces a wide range of potential risks as they apply to information security and data privacy. The institution supports a wide range of activities across its educational, research, and service programs, and each of these activities has a different threat model and corresponding set of safeguards. A natural tension exists between the disparate interests of security, privacy, and usability. These general terms may seem simple on the surface, but they represent a complex set of issues that are further complicated by the university’s diverse educational and research interests, business needs, institutional policies, and regulatory requirements.
On a day-to-day basis, the university typically works to identify, contain, and remediate information security threats that generally fall into the following categories:
Organized Criminal Groups, Botnet Operators, and Other Threat Actors
Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, spam, phishing, spear-phishing and whaling, SMS phishing (smishing); and voice phishing (vishing).
Equipment Failure
End-of-Life (EoL) hardware, unsupported or out-of-support, or undocumented software and applications, and occasionally inadequately maintained infrastructure.
Supply Chain Vulnerabilities
Vendors and other suppliers in the University’s supply chain who lack information security maturity (i.e. organization of information security, physical and environmental security, business continuity management, etc.).
Accessible & Exploitable Vulnerabilities
Unpatched machines and applications with known vulnerabilities that have published exploits and unknown vulnerabilities due to other factors such as misconfiguration.
Insiders & Human Error
Former employees, contractors, or current staff with malicious intent, and other threat-actors with ‘inside’ knowledge of the organization.
Robocalls
Until the current federal administration’s guidance to the FTC and other regulatory bodies changes to include enforcing existing laws and rules to prevent such crimes, Robocalls and similar consumer frauds will continue. Many government entities are their own internal rule making bodies, and these rules have the effect and power of administrative law.
UNM IT is spearheading several initiatives and efforts aimed at addressing institutional information security and data privacy risk. Many of you are working as members of various project teams on efforts including the Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and Network Security Enhancement Programs, the deployment of new technologies including the operational and threat intelligence platforms, and migration of services in the IT Data Center to the IT Software Defined Data Center (SD DC) environment. Other ongoing efforts include the deployment of a new identify and access management (IAM) solution and the phased rollout of a security information and event management (SIEM) platform.
Technology @ UNM
Various Contributors
What's Happening with PAÍS?
The Physics & Astronomy and Interdisciplinary Science or PAÍS building construction is nearing completion. Located at the northeast intersection of Yale Boulevard and Redondo Drive, the state-of-the-art science facility will replace the aging Physics and Astronomy building on North Campus.
When complete, PAÍS will house the entire P&A department faculty and research labs with renowned research programs in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Biological Physics, Condensed-Matter Physics, Optics and Photonics, Quantum Information Science, and Subatomic Physics. The new facility is designed for interdisciplinary student and faculty collaboration with nearly 140,000 square feet of classrooms, offices and laboratory space.
UNM & CNM's App Contest
The Office of the Chief Information Officer at the University of New Mexico (UNM) is sponsoring its seventh-annual Mobile App Contest, providing an opportunity for students from UNM and Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) to develop and apply coding skills to make useful mobile applications for the community.
The contest will also provide motivated students support to commercialize any market worthy apps that result.
A New LMS?
Elisha Allen
Over the last year, UNM IT Academic Technologies surveyed faculty and students regarding satisfaction with the existing LMS.
On the faculty side, surveys show a majority of faculty who are satisfied or neutral as it relates to the LMS, but there were high numbers of faculty who said that the system was not as easy to use as it could be and also wanted the system to work better on mobile devices. Both of these complaints are known problems with Blackboard Learn 9.1, which has not seen a lot of investment in usable user interface improvements over the last 7 years.
On the student side, our Educause technology survey showed student satisfaction with the LMS to be lagging behind other institutions. This information was evaluated in tandem with recommendations by a Provost-appointed faculty committee looking at university redesign, which recommended evaluation of other systems.
All findings were presented to the academic advisory board. In consideration of the responses from these groups, the academic advisory board requested we complete a thorough evaluation of current LMS offerings, including any additional features or improvements they may offer as compared to the existing LMS.
Over the longer term, some migration away from Blackboard Learn 9.1 is probably inevitable, as Blackboard’s strategic direction is aimed more directly at their cloud SaaS product.
HR Update
Shirley Alexander
New Employees — Welcome!
Academic Technologies
- Jamerson Tenorio
Systems Network Analyst 2 - Stephen Williams
IT Support Tech 2 - Delfido "Joey" Garcia
IT Support Tech 2
Platforms
- Mohammed Khan
Systems Linux Engineer - Brandon Amend
Systems Network Analyst 2
Applications
- Harold Chang
Programmer Analyst 2 - Bruce Jefferson
Programmer Analyst 2
Customer Support
- Mark Korenic
IT Support Tech 2
Staff Changes
Academic Technologies
- James Gonzales
Systems Network Analyst 2
Customer Support
- Giuseppe DeMartino
IT Support Tech
Networks
- Frank McQuerry
Supervisor Security & Alarm Systems - James Morrow
Security & Alarm Tech
Staff Departures — Thank You & Farewell
- David Moomey
IT Support Tech 2
Customer Support - David Sieger
Network Engineer
Data Networks - Yvette Montoya
Technical Training Consultant
Academic Technologies
